Father of Lies

When I left Starbucks, I found the Archangel Michael beating the living shit out of Satan. 

"Hey, now," I said.  "Ease up."

Michael sniffed and dropped Satan in a little heap beside me.  I was going to say more, but he flipped me off and launched into the sky.  Angels got wicked backwash.

"Thanks, man," said Satan.  He fussed with his suit, which was burned to rags.  "You realize that was a trick, though.  Now you're definitely damned for sure."

"Okay," I said.  "You want some of my brownie?"

"No."

He took half, and we walked down the street together.

The Angel of the World

The Angel of Art is a slapdash thing, a riot of red hair and a tiny frame, barely able to contain her boundless energy. The Angel of Dance is sedate, stately, almost phlegmatic, but his slightest motion is grace enough to set a thousand butterflies to flight.

The Angel of the World is like none of these, and more terrible than them all. Its hands are bloody, its feet stained with soot; its depthless eyes rarely emerge from the shadow of its brow. It is the angel to whom all prayers must travel.

That is where the blood comes from.

Angelshand

The angel stood in the square, arm outstretched, palm held up as if in warning. It became something of a wonder. People traveled for miles just for a glimpse, and the village grew prosperous on the pilgrim trade.

They renamed the town Angelshand. The town grew; new buildings sprang up over the years; the roads were paved; the town square shrank to a park, then a fountain, then an intersection. It wasn't the center of town anymore. That had glowing signs and tall buildings.

The angel stood in the grubby street, arm outstretched, palm held up as if in warning.

Snowfall in the Late December

It starts when the last flakes fall. A slight depression in the fluffy, white surface spreads out, branches, forms a rough cross. Then sweeping motions, back and forth, spreading the limbs into wings and a skirt.

Snow angels.

Ginny lay in one once, trying to help it along. We don't do that anymore. Instead, we watch them from the kitchen table as they blossom one by one on the lawn.

"I wonder what it's like," Lise says. "Being out there, I mean."

"Cold," I say. "Lonely."

The oven pings as it cools. We sip our cocoa and wait for spring.

The VCR in Heaven

“Home movie time!” cried God. He was lugging the old cardboard box of VHS cassettes up from the basement.

The cherubim and seraphim on the couch nodded, their grins fixed.

God knelt by the television. “Has someone tampered with this?” He asked. “It’s blinking twelve again.”

“We had that power outage,” volunteered a cherubim. “It probably reset.”

“Hmph,” said God. “It better not eat my tapes. I lost the one of the birth, you know.”

The angelic crowd knew. None of them would admit it. It was perhaps the only decent thing the Lightbringer had done for his fellow angels.